The 12 people and things that ruined Iran

Last month, Iran held its first elections since the nuclear deal was struck. Their outcome was the first reliable sense of how successful President Hassan Rouhani’s conservatively reformist project is likely to be.

Despite an ostensibly positive result, the battle is far from over. Under the surface of apparent progress and the promise of reform, unhappy hardliners, deeply opposed to the smallest taste of change, will push back hard. And those of even a mildly reformist bent like Rouhani face a steep uphill battle.

Reforming the economy, let alone society, will be very difficult: Iranians still face enormous problems in almost all areas. And yet this is a country with enormous stores of natural resources, a large and well-educated population, and a long and proud history. So what went wrong?

Here are 12 ideas, for starters:

1. Shāh Ismāʿil I

Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

IsmāʿilI, the founder of the Safavid dynasty — and one of Iran’s greatest empires — took power in 1501. By 1509 he had unified all of Persia (as it was then known). Ismāʿil was a great patron of the arts and highly efficient bureaucrat, and presided over great building projects. His most important achievement was arguably converting Persia from Sunni to Shiite Islam. Ismail loathed Sunnis and was ruthless in his conversion of the population. Part of his goal was to give Persia a strong identity, one that would be distinct from its arch rival, the Sunni Ottoman Empire — and he was brutally successful. Shiite Islam flourished in Iran, but it also further isolated converted Shiite Persians from the rest of the overwhelmingly Sunni Arab Middle East — an isolation that would cost Iran repeatedly in the centuries to come as the Arab states have repeatedly lined up against it. Today, the Sunni powers, led by Saudi Arabia, are once more united against the Shiite hegemony they believe Iran is striving for.

2. William Knox D’Arcy

Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

At the peak of the British Empire its subjects were, if nothing else, good at sniffing out financial opportunities. William Knox D’Arcy, an English speculator, was arguably one of the best. D’Arcy heard rumors that Persia was rife with undiscovered oil and in 1901 signed the D’Arcy Concession with Iran’s ruler, Moẓaffar od-Dīn Shāh, granting him exclusive rights to prospect for oil in three-quarters of the country for 60 years. In return, Iran would receive 16 percent of annual net profits. The concession was eventually taken over by the Anglo-Persian Oil company (today’s BP), which allowed the oil company to become one of the world’s richest and most powerful — all on the back of Iran’s greatest natural resource. D’Arcy’s concession not only robbed the country of billions in revenues, it continues to haunt Iran’s national consciousness as a shameful display of weakness in the face of a foreign power. This psychological imperative has formed a central part of Iranian foreign policy ever since, and is at the heart of the Islamic Republic’s continuing hostility toward the West, especially the U.S., today.

3. Kermit Roosevelt Jr.

Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

As a CIA operative, Kermit Roosevelt — grandson of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt — played a major role in the August 1953 coup that overthrew Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and reinforced the rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The CIA feared a Communist coup in Iran and considered Mosaddegh — the democratically elected prime minister at the time, who pushed for the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s assets — too volatile to be trusted. But the Shah proved to be a disastrous ruler and the coup only served to further bolster Iran’s national narrative of “victimhood.” The revolutionaries used the coup to great effect during the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew Pahlavi by accusing him of being a U.S. poodle and using Mosaddegh’s memory to remind the people of past American misdeeds toward Iran.

4. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was never really cut out to be a ruler. His father, Reza Shah, who rose from Cossack officer to Shah of Iran, always considered his son a weakling. He was probably right. But following the 1973 oil crisis, Mohammad Reza found himself in possession of enormous wealth, and used it to buy the latest American weapons in pursuit of his imperial ambitions to dominate the Middle East. As he grew more powerful he also became more paranoid — of communists and clerics alike. The Iranian people loathed his profligate spending, his increasing autocracy and his close relations with Washington. In the end, they took to the streets, causing him to flee the country in early 1979, never to return, and hastening Iran’s transition to an Islamic Republic — which transformed the country from regional powerhouse to rogue state for over 30 years.

5. Ayatollah Rūḥallāh Khomeynī

Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

Which brings us to Khomeynī. An austere cleric who was based, for much of his life, in Iran’s holy city of Qom, Khomeynī found himself increasingly at odds with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s modernizing tendencies, especially his desire to “westernize” Iran. His sermons against the Shah, recorded on cassette tapes and distributed around the country, became hugely popular and contributed to his eventual exile to Iraq. By 1970 he had developed his theory of velāyat-e faqīh — or “rule of the jurists.” The doctrine held that those most fit to rule were those best qualified to interpret God’s laws — namely, clerics like him. Khomeynī was to become the de facto leader of the Iranian Revolution and his teachings formed the basis of the new theocratic state, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which would put Iran at odds not only with the West but most of its Middle Eastern neighbors as well. Today, Iran has practically no allies among the Middle Eastern states.

6. The Muslim student followers of the Imam’s line

Iranian students climb over the wall of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, November 4, 1979

Iran was already a mess in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution when, on November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S Embassy in Tehran and took 52 American diplomats hostage for close to 18 months. If the revolution had alarmed the world, the hostage crisis caused outrage — and proved to the international community that the revolutionaries could not be trusted. Washington immediately severed diplomatic ties, put in place sanctions and seized extensive Iranian assets. In the eyes of the world Iran was now a rogue state — a label it would carry for the next three decades, at great cost.

7. Saddam Hussein

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

And that cost was felt almost immediately. Saddam Hussein, the ruler of neighboring Iraq, had watched Iran plunge into revolutionary turmoil. Saddam was still bitter about longstanding border disputes between Iran and Iraq over the Shatt al-Arab waterway. He feared that Iran’s revolution would stir up Iraq’s Shiite majority and pose a threat to his rule.

Thinking Iran was weak, Iraqi forces invaded on September 22, 1980. Saddam expected a quick victory. He was wrong. The war would last for almost eight years, and devastate both sides. It cost Iran billions of dollars and (though estimates vary) around 1 million casualties — some caused by chemical weapons. Iran is still haunted by the scars of this particularly traumatic war. The war’s aftermath reinforced the belief that Iran has always been without allies and contributed, in part, to the country’s desire to advance its nuclear program.

8. Ali Khamenei

Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

Khamenei is the Islamic Republic’s second and current Supreme Leader. He lacks both Khomeini’s religious qualifications and his charisma. In the eyes of many Iranians, he doesn’t compare well to his predecessor at all. Perhaps seeking to rectify that impression, Khamenei began to meddle in party politics (which, as Supreme Leader, he is supposed to keep out of) far more than Khomeini ever did. The nadir of this meddling came in 2009, after the fraudulent reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iranians took to the streets in protest while Khamenei publicly backed his president and the obviously false result. For the first time since the days of the Shah, Iranians chanted “death to the dictator” from Tehran’s rooftops. The suppression of the protestors, the “Green Movement,” was one of darkest periods of modern Iranian history. The effects of the government clampdown are still felt byIranian youth — who desire change but feel utterly demoralized about achieving it.

9. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Ahmadinejad was the international face of Iran for eight long years — much to the despair of many Iranians. Ahmadinejad had promised to redistribute the country’s oil wealth and sort out the economy. He did neither. Meanwhile, his belligerent intransigence over Iran’s nuclear program so alienated the P5+1 (the five Security Council powers and Germany) that it brought several rounds of U.S. sanctions down on the country, further worsening Iran’s already precarious financial situation. His fraudulent reelection in 2009 bitterly divided the country. He was, from start to finish, a disaster for Iran.

10. Iran’s nuclear program

IR-40 facility in Arak | Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

The recent nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 led many to call Iran’s nuclear program a success, but this is far from the truth. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi started the program in the 1950s and expanded it in the early 1970s. Pahlavi wanted nuclear-powered electricity to preserve Iran’s oil reserves, which the country needed to sell. But over half a century after it began, Iran has one nuclear power plant — which only recently came online. In that time it has spent billions and billions on the project, been sanctioned repeatedly and suffered international isolation — with very little to show in return. Obviously, Iran has now got the technology to build a nuclear bomb, but whether it has the necessary delivery systems is still unclear. The country is extremely unlikely to be able to breakout while the deal remains in force. It’s all been a lot of grief for very little tangible result.

11. Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution

BBC Farsi/Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

More commonly known as the Revolutionary Guard, the IRGC was founded by Khomeini just after the 1979 Revolution to defend the Islamic Republic’s core values. Since then it has expanded as both an economic and political player in Iran — to the country’s detriment. The IRGC is now involved in almost all areas of the Iranian economy and functions almost like a mafia boss, controlling several state-owned companies and playing a big role in smuggling and sanctions-busting. In the political sphere its hard-line stance is increasingly coming to dominate the Iranian state and its foreign policy has pushed the country to get militarily involved across the Middle East. The IRGC plays a role in conflicts in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, costing Iran too much money and too many lives — not to mention further destabilizing one of the world’s most unstable regions.

12. Oil

The Shah opens the facilities of International Naval Oil Company of Iran in 1970 | Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

Oil is often called the world’s greatest resource curse. Nowhere is this truer than in Iran. Knox D’Arcy’s discovery in Iran turned Western attention to Iran and set the stage for a century of external meddling, including the loss of a majority of Iran’s oil revenues and an externally-organized coup. As with all Middle Eastern oil producers, the presence of large amounts of oil also prevented the country from investing in a broader range of industries and created a lopsided economy overly reliant on its main export. Oil has arguably been more destructive for Iran than anything else — and the country’s reliance on it is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.

Oil in many ways encapsulates Iran’s tragedy: a resource that has tied Iran’s fortunes to Western powers it perceives as deeply exploitative. Oil is both an example of Iran’s good fortune and rich potential, and a weakness others have used against it. It’s the Iranian story.

David Patrikarakos, a contributing writer at POLITICO, is author of “Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State” (I.B. Tuaris, 2012).

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I_write_how_it_is

Maybe the worst thing which ruined Iran is its religion 🙂

Posted on 3/4/16 | 1:16 PM CET

Shazz

I do not agree with some parts of this article. It does not consider the fact that major changes in the politics, culture and religion of the country will always negatively impact the country in some way. The fact that shah Ismail is there is proof. Blaming him for what is what wrong in Iran NOW is ridiculous.

Posted on 3/4/16 | 11:16 PM CET

Hossein

lies,lies,lies
The Only Thing Ruined Iran Is Intervention Of Foreign Countries
Imam Helped Our Country , And the person who write this article don’t write real point

Posted on 3/4/16 | 11:38 PM CET

Saoshyant

The only thing that ruined iran is her weakness, the rest are excuses

Posted on 3/5/16 | 8:35 AM CET

Eidur

But how can Iranians be really proud of their long history if they have replaced all that with Islam and a degree of arabization despite it was imposed on them by the sword killing their coutry fellows and knowing all this they don’t renounce to the religion?

People around the world admire Persian culture but all that is gone today, it is a blurry picture that doesn’t define Iran anymore. When I see Iranians regaining their Persian culture I will believe they are really proud of their long history.